Monday, March 23, 2015

Palaxy Tracks releases three more videos from Wilderness

The new Palaxy Tracks LP, Wilderness, will be available in stores April 14th. In anticipation of the release, here are three videos for tracks from the new album. The video for "An Episode" was animated by Luca Tóth and Stephen McNally. Keep an eye out for some very clever little nods to various paranoia films (hint: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers").

The video for "Pareidolia" was directed by Phillip Niemeyer of Austin studio Northern-Southern, with photography by Vincent Venturella, and depticts the world's most epic game of hide-and-seek, starting with Palaxy Tracks' Brandon Durham counting to one million, then spanning several cities and alternate dimensions.

Finally, the psychedelic line-art video for "Weird Weather" was created by Visualists, a UK-based minimalist animation studio.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Palaxy Tracks releases new video for "The Afterlives"

After nearly a decade of silence, Palaxy Tracks has returned with a new video single, "The Afterlives." Directed by Richard Rankin, previously known for a slew of disturbing, true-crime tinged videos for sludge metal duo The Body, the found-footage film depicts the transformation of a couple of young women into ghastly gouls. As singer/songwriter Brandon Durham reported, "Not only does it act as a perfect vehicle to guide you through what may be one of our darkest songs, but it also shares some valuable and timely make-up tips." Just in time for Halloween!

"The Afterlives" is one of twelve new songs to appear on the new album Wilderness, due out in early 2015.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Does it seem like anyone and everyone is releasing some sort of "deluxe edition" these days? Well, here's one more! Peek-A-Boo Records commemorates the 10th anniversary of Black Lipstick's seminal debut album with the deluxe treatment. Our art department and staff of researchers have meticulously and lovingly put together a package that pays tribute to the release that The Village Voice praised as "404 error: File not found" with the following features:

All ten of the original tracks exactly as they originally appeared on the original album

One unlisted bonus track, exactly as it appeared on the original album

Reproduced from the original 2003 master, exactly as it was originally mastered

Original artwork by Phillip Niemeyer, reproduced exactly as it appeared on the original album

Full-color, 8-panel booklet printed with the actual techniques and equipment that were standard in 2003

Original retail pricing stickers, exactly as they appeared on the original release in stores

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

The Octopus Project releases new single and video for "Sharpteeth"

We're super psyched to share "Sharpteeth," the second single from The Octopus Project's forthcoming fifth feature-length, Fever Forms. The single features two exclusive B-sides and is available digitally from iTunes and eMusic, or get the limited edition fluorescent pink vinyl 7" from Peek-A-Boo Records.

The strange and wondrous video finds a group of furred and feathered usurpers performing the tune in a world somewhere between Lawrence Welk and Enter the Void. Psychic misadventures ensue. Directed by the band, the video was shot by the Zellner Brothers at the Scottish Rite theater in Austin, TX and in its surrounding mystery jungles.

Fever Forms is available for pre-order now through July 9th! Whether you choose digital, vinyl or plastic disc, each format comes with six exclusive bonus tracks when you pre-order directly from Peek-A-Boo Records, or pick up the Super Deluxe bundle and get your hands on evern more cool stuff like the limited edition 3D Viewmaster, exclusive t-shirt, exclusive buttons and more!

Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Octopus Project Announces New LP: Fever Forms

Peek-A-Boo Records is proud to announce that Austin's favorite experimental pop band, The Octopus Project, will return with their fifth studio album, Fever Forms, on July 9th, 2013.

Where its predecessor (2010's Hexadecagon) went wide-screen and cosmic, Fever Forms is more representative of The Octopus Project's live experience — dense and ecstatic, a concentrated dose of frenetic beats and exuberant melody set in a brilliantly-colored sound world. The first single, the infectious "Whitby," is available now as a download — complete with exclusive b-sides, music video & a karaoke version(!).

Some facts about the record:

Fever Forms was recorded in a museum carved out of a mountain and mixed in collaboration with the mighty Erik Wofford (Black Angels, M. Ward, Maserati).

Fever Forms is the strongest horse.

Fever Forms is living in the future and the past at the same time.

Fever Forms is winning the largest trophies.

Fever Forms is 10,000 giga-pets doing flips in unison.

Fever Forms is a tattoo of an 18-wheeler bursting out of your chest.

Fever Forms is post-ears, pre-brains.

Track listing:

The Falls

Pyramid Kosmos

Whitby

Death Graduates

The Mythical E.L.C.

Unspool

Mmkit

The Man with the Golden Hand

Perhap

Choi Sighs

Deep Spice

Sharpteeth

The band plans to hit the road again in August in support of the new LP. Tour dates and pre-order details for the album to be announced shortly, including deluxe bundles featuring some excellent surprises. Stay tuned!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

The Octopus Project Premieres New Single & Video for "Whitby"

Fresh off an East Coast tour and successful appearance at last weekend's Fun Fun Fun Festival, The Octopus Project kicks off the western half of their North American tour this week by dropping a new digital single and video for "Whitby," pulled from a yet-untitled album of new material planned for release in Spring 2013.

The single is available NOW on iTunes, eMusic, and the usual digital channels. An extended single which includes additional bonus tracks (b-sides! a karaoke version!) is available for purchase exclusively from Peek-A-Boo Records. The band will also be selling a limited edition bundle at shows, which includes a silk-screened poster with a download code for the extended single.

The band also released a music video for "Whitby," which premiered on Stereogum, YouTube, and Vimeo yesterday. Created, shot and directed by the band, the stop-motion extravaganza was crafted entirely using die-cut colored card stock. Band members meticulously designed each shape and used a cutting machine generally reserved for scrapbooking to cut them out before photographing them in real world settings. The final video consists of over 4,000 separate images.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

The Octopus Project releases Hexadecagon CD/2xLP, tours North America

The Octopus Project leaves Wednesday for a month of dates across the US, Canada and Mexico in support of the band's new album Hexadecagon. The geometrical term for a sixteen-sided object, Hexadecagon, was originally conceived as a performance piece with eight songs written for an integrated eight-channel audio and eight-channel video system. After performing the audiovisual panorma to emphatically positive reception at two over-capacity shows during SXSW earlier this year, The Octopus Project spent several months recording the eight songs at the band's home studio in Austin and mixing in Dallas with John Congleton (St. Vincent, Explosions In the Sky, Clinic, The Walkmen). The music is written to work in layers — originally for an audio canvas of eight-channels, but here re-arranged and re-orchestrated to create an engrossing experience for anyone with a pair of speakers (or headphones, ideally).

Peek-A-Boo Records is thrilled to release Hexadecagon on CD, 2xLP and digital formats on October 26, 2010. The CD is packaged in a deluxe gatefold digipak with a booklet filled with artwork and imagery from the Hexadecagon performance. The vinyl release is a delight for audiophiles and collectors alike. The album spans three sides of a gatefold double LP. The fourth side contains ten bonus tracks unavailable on any other format, cut to wax in interlocked, spiraling "roulette grooves," with each of the roulette grooves dropping into a single locked groove. The vinyl also includes a cut-and-assemble zoetrope that the listener can place atop the record as it spins, creating a miniature animation. Each album track has its own zoetrope animation strip — eight in all. Needless-to-say, this is a very special release.

Monday, February 22, 2010

The Octopus Project announces "Hexadecagon"

This morning The Octopus Project announced a new audiovisual experiment called "Hexadecagon," to be performed during SXSW on the roof of Whole Foods. The name, a geometrical term for a sixteen-sided object, loosely describes a custom eight-channel audio and eight-channel video system that the band has been experimenting with for many months now, in addition to writing original music, building custom electronics, programming software and shooting video footage for the event.

For the performance, eight speakers will be set up in a circle surrounding the audience with the band set up in the middle, while a combination of video and still images will be projected onto eight overhead screens. With this setup, the band can send all or part of the music spinning around in a circle or jumping from point to point across the space, or put completely different elements in each speaker. Meanwhile the video can run independently or in tight synchronization with the sounds (following them around the circle, for example).

The Octopus Project will perform Hexadecagon twice (early & late shows) on Friday, March 19, 2010, on the rooftop plaza of Whole Foods at 6th & Lamar. The event is FREE, all ages and open to the public. Capacity is very limited, and admittance will be on a first-come, first-served basis. Hexadecagon is not affiliated with SXSW, so badges and wristbands are NOT required and will grant no special entry.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

The Octopus Project's first two albums reissued on vinyl

Close on the heels of a new EP and recent North American tour, The Octopus Project's first two albums have been reissued on vinyl and are available in stores now. The band's haunting debut, Identification Parade, was originally issued by Peek-A-Boo Records in 2002, and deftly combines the experimentation of progressive post-rock, the blips and bleeps of electronic music and the raw, human ROCK of rock. Recorded and assembled over several years while the band was still mostly a recording project, Identification Parade is far more etherial, hypnotic and atmospheric than subsequent albums, and has been best described as "ambidextrous equipment failure junk-tronica."

Several years and many tours later, the 2005 sophomore album, One Ten Hundred Thousand Million, captured the barely-controlled chaos of The Octopus Project's live performances in a rich, surround sound, 3-D, technicolor studio amalgamation injected with the wild energy they felt in noisy, tightly-packed clubs. It was this album that caught the attention of Rolling Stone Senior Editor David Fricke, who described the band's sound as "an outtake of the Beach Boys' 'Good Vibrations' with Mogwai as the studio band" and "tightly composed bundles of synthesized whoop and circus-calliope cheer... like Stereolab with happy feet."

Identification Parade has never appeared on vinyl until now. One Ten Hundred Thousand Million was originally released on vinyl in a very limited edition of 500 copies with alternate hand-screened cover artwork. Peek-A-Boo Records is very excited to finally make both of these stellar albums available for vinyl enthusiasts.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

The August 2009 issue of Spin Magazine features a nine-page spread called "Unsung: The 100 Greatest Bands You've (Probably) Never Heard," dedicated to all of the obscure bands the publication has failed to give proper credit over the years.

"In Spin's nearly 25-year history, some truly crap bands have achieved glory while more deserving — or just less lucky — artists languished on the fringes," states the introduction to the list, which includes such word-of-mouth favorites as Opal, Unrest, Huggy Bear, The Gories and Gaunt. Also included on that list are former Peek-A-Boo Records artists Knife in the Water (Austin, TX) and personal favorites Big Drag (San Antonio, TX).

Other Texas bands included on the list are Cherubs, Sixteen Deluxe and Young Heart Attack.

Friday, July 24, 2009

The Octopus Project launches tour supporting new Golden Beds EP

The Octopus Project is hitting road once again to promote a brand new release due in stores next week. The band has kept busy over the past month by touring around the south, playing at the Austin Fashion Awards last week and rounding out an incredible 4th of July show at Stubb's with Explosions In the Sky and The Wooden Birds. The band sets out once again today on an extended North American tour behind the forthcoming Golden Beds enhanced CD EP, which features five songs and seven videos (over 40 minutes of sights and sounds!).

Musically, some tracks are new, some are fresh takes on ideas from the past and each explores a different facet of their omnivorous sonic creations — from big-riff rock to tiny electronics to blissful sing-alongs. You can stream the entire EP here, so roll up those shirt sleeves and get ready to dip your arms deep into this kaleidoscopic candy jar full of tasty Octopus-flavored treats of both the audio and visual variety.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Super XX Man Volume III EP digitally reissued and expanded

Scott Garred, aka Super XX (pronounced "double-X") Man, began self-releasing his home recordings in the mid-'90s, while still fronting the popular indie-pop trio Silver Scooter. At the time, Super XX Man's four-tracked cassettes were simply a side project, but when Scott moved to Portland in 2002, he continued his solo recordings, eventually recruiting a full band and moving Super XX Man onto the stage and into the studio. Super XX Man has since been featuredtwice on NPR's All Songs Considered and has just released a new studio album, Volume XII: There'll Be Diamonds, on Portland's Tender Loving Empire label.

When Peek-A-Boo Records originally released Super XX Man's Volume III EP in 1997, it was limited to six tracks due to the inherent limitations of the 7" format. However, Scott had recorded more than twice that number of tracks with the idea that, like the two preceding self-released cassettes, Volume III would hold 12 songs. With this digital re-issue, Volume III has finally been expanded and restored to include the missing tracks, among which you'll find a moving cover of East River Pipe's "Crawl Away."

The expanded reissue of Volume III is now available for download via iTunes and eMusic, and vinyl fans who purchase the original 7" version of the EP will receive a download code for the full digital release.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

New Diagonals video (featuring Black Lipstick's Steve Garcia)

In case you hadn't heard, Black Lipstick booming bass man and wicked guitar wizard Steve Garcia formed a new band called Diagonals. Diagonals have a new LP called Valley of the Cyclops, which just came out on Austin's Monofonus Press Records. Pick it up ASAP and prepare to have your mind melted.

In the meantime, check out the band's new video for "Clones," in which Garcia ponders some of the same theoretical issues explored by Michael Keaton in the groundbreaking 1996 sci-fi thriller Multiplicity.

"Clones" was directed by Nick Smith, who previously directed the video for The Octopus Project's "Music is Happiness."